Lauren Sparks

The Sparks Notes

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Mrs. Write

September 14, 2018 by Lauren 40 Comments

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

I recently chewed on the following question from someone:

“If you knew no one would ever read what you write, would you:

Not write at all

Write a bit less

Write a lot more?”

 

I don’t really know how to answer this.  I do know that the first option – not writing at all – is really no option for me at all.  I have loved writing almost as long as I can remember and my brain just thinks in terms of narrative and analogy and phrasing.

 

Poetry was my first love.  An elementary school assignment helped me discover that rhyming came easy for me.  I composed my first verses about the game of softball.  A ballad along the lines of “Casey at the Bat”.  At 9 years old, it’s what I knew.  And I still have it if you ever need a giggle.  In middle school, I wrote about what I longed to know – middle school boys.  My poems dripped with the weird feelings and angsty emotions I couldn’t really understand.  Impressed by my talents, my girlfriends even requested I write poems for them about the boys THEY liked.  I usually obliged.  I penned a few about my growing devotion for God, too.  But at the risk of sounding falsely righteous, unrequited love remained my favorite topic.

 

I joined the Creative Writing Club in high school (What?  It was cool…ish) and enjoyed assignments for English and Literature classes.  Until my senior year when my Honors English teacher tried to wring every ounce of creative zeal out of my body and leave me out to dry.  I know that sounds dramatic, but I don’t say it lightly.  Both of my parents taught public school in the same district I attended.  They frowned upon complaining about teachers, but sided with me on this one.  After a year of harsh critique and criticism, I burned out and took a break from pen wielding while enjoying all college had to offer (a little too much) and falling in love with my husband.

 

I got pregnant with Shelby during the first year of our marriage and kept a pregnancy journal for her.  During those months, jotting down what I experienced and felt for her reignited my passion for words.  So passionate was I, in fact, about that notebook that I frightened my poor husband to death with a wailing phone call after our new puppy chewed it up.  What can I say?  Pregnancy hormones.

 

As we made plans for me to stay home and care for our first child, we looked for ways to cut costs.  The relatively new, exciting and slow (remember dial-up?) internet offered me a job writing online devotionals for a Christian website.  Unfortunately, these folks were a little ahead of their time.  Not many people did their reading digitally in the year 2000 and the money ran out quickly.  But my first paycheck was the exact amount I owed my OB/GYN after taxes for delivering my baby.  Only God.

 

When we moved to the big city for Shelby’s medical care, a new church family blessed me by using my gift for articles and newsletters in the Women’s Ministry.  A few years later, a charitable organization offered us the opportunity to fund raise for research to benefit Dravet Syndrome in Shelby’s name.  I birthed a blog to help with those efforts called “Shelby’s Fast Feet”.  I wrote about her and this disorder and life as a special needs mom.  That blog became “The Sparks Notes” as I continued to write about Shelby but also felt called to share other details of my life and the ways God moves in it.  And now I continue to write about Jesus and family and friends and all the things here at laurensparks.net.

 

Several of you kind friends have asked me how I’m progressing with my latest passion project – writing a book.  The simple answer is…slow.  I let this frustrate me initially, but I refuse to allow it that power anymore.  The truth is I am a mom and a wife with 2 part time jobs.  And right now writing has to fit around the edges of all that.  And I’m writing about friendship.  So I’m not going to pass on the opportunity to share in fellowship and community with someone else so I can sit at the keyboard.  That defeats the purpose of the message I believe God is whispering through me.  And you know what?  The more time I spend with the material and the more time I spend with the real people, the more He opens my eyes to the incompleteness of the lessons He continues to teach me on community. 

God keeps molding me and writing the story He wants to tell.

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 In Ephesians 4:1 Paul says, “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”  So I keep living, and seeking and loving and typing, while waiting expectantly for the end result, which may be much different than the book I initially flushed out.

 

In the mean time, I write here, knowing that as long as I write to tell other’s about the love of Jesus, I walk in obedience to the call on my life.  So for those of you sweet enough to still be reading, stay tuned.  And if you want to grab coffee or lunch, I’m your girl.  Research, you know 😉

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Life Hacks and Life Goals

July 5, 2018 by Lauren 37 Comments

 

At a party this weekend, I watched in awe and fascination as a friend lopped the bottom off of her cupcake and placed it on top of the icing to make a cupcake sandwich.  Mind blown!  Have you seen this?  It makes the cupcake so much easier and less messy to eat.  Now THAT’s a useful life hack.  Unlike this:

 

 

Who is ever going to use an office clip binder to cover the head of a razor?  I need more USEFUL life hacks.  Lots of them, because my life is about to get a whole lotta complicated.

 

For years friends and family members have suggested that I should write a book.  My response?  “I don’t have enough material for an entire book.”  or “I have no idea what I would even write about.”  But the times, they are a changing.  Although I still doubt whether I can intelligently pen an entire book’s worth, I feel a calling to try.  Several months ago, everything started to sound like a book idea to me.  And now it’s all I can think about.  But here’s the rub; I’m terrified.  I started this blog 6 years ago because, as my friend author Jen Bleakley says, “I make sense of my world by turning feelings into words, and experiences into sentences.”  And writing this blog is comfortable for me now.  I love the form of self-expression and the way it allows me to connect and communicate with so many of you.  I love the platform it gives me to tell others about Jesus.  To continue to write nothing but this forever would be a very safe and happy place for me.  Except that I feel God’s calling to more.

 

Do you remember the Prayer of Jabez?  1 Chronicles 4:9-10 wasn’t an often studied or taught passage of scripture until Bruce Wilkinson’s book hit the shelves in 2000 and created a stir.  Jabez prayed, “Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory!”  I believe a book is the way God will enlarge my territory.  The way I can reach a greater audience.  I don’t want to write a book because I think I have something amazing to say that the world must hear, but I do believe telling our stories is the way we share Jesus with others.  In Un-Afraid, my new author friend Carey Wiggins Scott’s latest book, she says, “authenticity turns beneficial when we do two things:  1) When we tell truth about the storms we’re currently facing (or have faced).  2) And when we also share how God is working in them or through them to calm the waters (or how we are waiting for Him to intervene).  People need truth and they also need hope.  And when you’re a Jesus-girl, the under-current of your authenticity is always anchored in the hope of Jesus.”  I’ve never before seen a more perfect written description of my calling in God’s Kingdom.

I don’t want to write a book because I think I have something amazing to say that the world must hear, but I do believe telling our stories is the way we share Jesus with others.

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Hebrews 10:36 NIV says, “You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God you will receive what he has promised.”  We know the will of God is for us to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”  Mark 16:15 NIV  The written word is the gift He’s allowing me to use to do it.  And even though I know He’s in it, I’m filled with doubts about my ability to accomplish the task.  It looms too large in my mind.  Not just all the work it will take to write (and where I will find the time to do it with 2 part time jobs and 2 kids and a husband to care for), but also the platform building and literary agents and publishing houses and all the things that I still don’t know enough about.  Author Holley Gerth says, “God will fill the gaps for what you lack right now.  Jesus turned a few fish and loves of bread into a meal for thousands.  He can turn whatever you offer into enough too.”  I’m counting on that.  And my friend Heather wisely told me that if God has called me to write, then every time I sit down to it I am being obedient.  He will take care of the rest.  Yes!

 

So why am I telling you all of this?  First of all, for accountability.  It’s one thing for me to tell my husband and my mom that I’m going to write a book, but a horse of a different color to put it out on the inter webs.  It’s gettin’ real, y’all.  Second, I need your help.  If you are still reading this, you either enjoy my writing or are a sweet enough friend to support me anyway (Bless my heart.)  I need your prayers.  If I could be so presumptuous to ask, pray for me to get out of my own way so the love of Christ flows from the page.  Pray for time management and all the little details that will be a part of the process.

 

There are other ways you can help too.  Agents and publishers want to see that I have readership.  If you haven’t already subscribed to receive these blog posts in your e-mail box, I hope you will.  And comment on my posts if you feel lead – not just on the social media post – but on the blog post itself.  And lastly, if you like something I said, share it on your social media accounts so others can read it too.

 

Well, I bet you didn’t expect homework when you clicked on that picture of a cupcake; but I have now shared my dreams and deepest desires with you – whether you wanted to know them or not.  So before I work myself into a lather and start shadow boxing to “Eye of the Tiger”, I will close with Ephesians 3:17-19 NIV.  I referenced it in a recent post but I keep coming back to this passage because it is the scripture I pray over anyone who ever reads a word I write.

 

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”  

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About Me

I love Jesus, my husband and caffeine. The order of these can change depending on how tired I am. When my two daughters, stepson, and 4 grandchildren get to be too much, I practice yoga. God graciously allows me to share our adventures, victories and flub-ups from my laptop. May He be glorified here.
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